It has taken a long time, but small businesses are showing real signs of strength

Small business owners didn't benefit from the bailouts of the last few years, but there are strong signs “they may finally be rebounding on their own,” according to this post from USNews.com.“The optimism index calculated by the National Federation of Independent Business has ticked upward so far this year, after dropping at the end of 2012 as the 'fiscal cliff' approached,” according to the USNews.com post. “NFIB surveys show that more small businesses are planning to hire, spend and build up inventories throughout 2013.”Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight wrote in a recent analysis that “the gears at small businesses are expected to turn a bit faster in the coming months," adding, "optimism is in the air."In addition, the surprising addition of 236,000 new jobs in the latest employment report — far more jobs than most economists expected — “suggests small businesses may be hiring even more robustly than surveys indicate.”Other trends “will make life a bit easier for small-business owners and push optimism higher still,” the magazine concludes. Most prominent: the rebound of the housing market, which “will revive the fortunes of many contractors and the workers they employ.”

Better safe than sorry

Bloomberg reports big insurance companies, including American International Group Inc. and Travelers Cos., are tailoring cybersecurity products to small companies that increasingly are facing the kinds of attacks that larger firms endure.Small and midsize companies are “where we're going to see some of the most aggressive growth in the next couple of years, because it's been a part of the market that was ignored,” Bob Parisi, network security and privacy practice leader at Marsh Inc., the insurance brokerage of Marsh & McLennan Cos, tells Bloomberg.The policies for small companies “typically cover liability from hacking and provide technical support,” according to the story. “They can also defray costs of complying with laws that require companies to notify customers when private information has been compromised.”

Tim Francis, the enterprise cyber-insurance lead for Travelers, tells Bloomberg that smaller businesses used to have a mentality that “nobody's going to even bother to hack into my business, they're after bigger fish. That really isn't the case,” he said. “There are bad guys out there that are looking to get information in the easiest way possible.”

This and that

Ready to innovate?: The new post on Forbes.com from NorTech CEO Rebecca O. Bagley offers three key points driven home by last week's NorTech Innovation Awards. (And if you missed the awards, Crain's technology reporter Chuck Soder has a good summary here.)Those three important takeaways: companies need to push past conventional wisdom that causes them to think in a box; businesses need to be aware their customers don't always know what they want; and paying too much attention to traditional business metrics inhibits companies from making breakthroughs.“One company that understands these concepts well” she writes, is Vitamix, the high-end blender maker whose president and CEO, Jodi Berg, gave the keynote address at the awards.“Berg understands that innovation is not a one-time thing,” Ms. Bagley writes. “Whether you are part of a startup company or one that's several generations old, you have to continue to reach above and beyond what you have done before to stay relevant. In other words: innovate or lose.”That'll work:Artemis Capital Partners of Boston announced it has recapitalized an Ashland company, Ohio Tool Works Corp., that makes industrial honing machines, tooling and abrasives.Financial terms were not disclosed.Ohio Tool Works' executive management team — headed by John Hovsepian, its president and general manager — “will continue as owners and operators of the business,” Artemis said.

Ohio Tool Works, founded in 2004, operates a 50,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Ashland. It has sales offices in Houston and distribution channels worldwide.A taste of home: Airports are pretty generic places, but this USA Today feature calls attention to the way small companies can help make them a little more personal.For instance, at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the newspaper notes that more than 1,500 containers of locally produced Bertman Ball Park Mustard were sold last year.At Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, “thousands of travelers stop by Obrycki's, a local favorite's airport branch, just to get crabs.” (There's also an Obrycki's outpost at Hopkins.)During the month of February alone, travelers bought more than 4,000 crab cakes at the Baltimore airport.